Furious 7: Impressively audacious

Furious 7 (2015) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for intense action violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.3.15

Somewhere along the way, a modest, inner-city street-racing flick morphed into a turbo-charged, gleefully preposterous Mission: Impossible wannabe.

But with results this entertaining, it’s hard to complain. Even when things get silly.

A shadowy U.S. government agent (Kurt Russell, right) makes Brian (Paul Walker, left) and
Dominic (Vin Diesel) an offer they can't refuse: Retrieve a kidnapped computer hacker, and
in return gain access to information that will allow them to target the vengeful maniac who
keeps trying to kill them.

And rest assured: Things get very, very silly. This is a movie for folks who found the action sequences in 2010’s big-screen version of The A-Team too restrained. (Steering and “flying” a parachuting tank by shooting the big gun, anyone?)

Rarely have I seen so many laws of physics ignored, circumvented and utterly ruptured.

Rarely have so many human bodies demonstrated Superman-level invulnerability.

Rarely has a bad guy taken such a lickin’, only to keep on tickin’.

Rarely have I been less bothered.

But let’s establish our parameters. Furious 7 — newest, biggest and baddest in the surprise franchise built from 2001’s The Fast and the Furious — is by no means classic filmmaking. It’s a live-action Warner Bros. cartoon, with heroes and villains alike remaining as unscathed as the Road Runner’s Coyote, after one of his plunges to a canyon floor, miles below.

We’re talking Guilty Pleasure here, with heavy emphasis on the guilty. But it’s also a pleasure, because there’s no denying director James Wan’s ability to deliver one helluva great ride.

Wan’s predecessor, Justin Lin, reinvigorated the franchise with 2009’s fourth entry, then blasted things into action-flick immortality with his next two chapters. But Wan deserves equal credit for maintaining the momentum and giving us exactly what is expected: audaciously giddy action sequences, ferocious mano a mano fight scenes, and plenty of time with the characters we’ve grown to know and love.

Because yes: This series’ cast is its primo selling point. The brotherly bond between Dominic “Dom” Toretto (Vin Diesel) and Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) remains paramount, their mutual respect oddly poignant even during circumstances as absurd as these. Dom’s puppy-dog devotion to tough-as-nails Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) is equally touching, despite the soap-opera contrivance of the amnesia that has stricken her memory of their shared love.

Comparative newcomer Dwayne Johnson’s Hobbs — who entered the franchise with installment five — grants the team a thin veneer of respectability, with his DDS credentials. On top of which, the oh-so-perfect pairing of Diesel and Johnson is irresistible; they must spend all their time, between scenes, comparing pecs and biceps.

Nor should we overlook the comedy tag-team pairing of Tej (Ludacris) and Roman (Tyrese Gibson), both adept at the verbal comedy relief ... while also reminding us (as if that were necessary) that none of these events are to be taken too seriously.

Brick Mansions: Thick as a...

Brick Mansions (2014) • View trailer 
One star. Rated PG-13, despite frenetic gunfire, relentless violence, profanity, drug content, sexual menace and racial epithets
By Derrick Bang

My 8-year-old nephew could have written a better script.

Pinned down by an overhead sniper, Lino (David Belle, left) and Damien (Paul Walker)
try to figure out their next move. It won't be hard; in a movie this daft, I'm sure they
could just sprout wings and fly up to confront their attacker.

I marvel at the fact that people — in this case, Luc Besson and Bibi Naceri — got paid actual money to generate such swill. This inept excuse for an action flick may not be as disgustingly mean-spirited as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s recent Sabotage, but it’s just as stupid.

Actually, Brick Mansions isn’t even a movie; it’s just a big-screen talent showcase for French parkour founder David Belle, a fast-moving force of nature best known as a stunt coordinator on films such as Transporter 2, Colombiana and The Family. Belle is the real star here, and — I cannot lie — his jaw-dropping free running, climbing, jumping, hopping and bopping are a sight to behold.

Poor Paul Walker — the late Paul Walker — may be top-billed, but he’s little more than a shadow in Belle’s wake.

And both of them are ill-served by this limp-noodle project from Besson, the French movie machine — he also co-produced this junker — who dashes off scripts, individually or collaboratively, like grocery lists. And, frankly, filming a grocery list might have given us a better plot.

Besson has delivered numerous enjoyable hits, from La Femme Nikita and The Transporter to Taken. But he’s also responsible for a lot of disappointing junk, including recent efforts such as Lockout and this year’s Kevin Costner vehicle, 3 Days to Kill.

Brick Mansions actually is an American remake of an earlier Besson/Naceri script, 2004’s District 13. Belle played the same character in that version — same name, even — which was set in the “futuristic” Paris ghettos of 2010, where an undercover cop and an ex-thug (Belle’s part) teamed up to infiltrate a criminal gang in order to defuse a neutron bomb.

Imagine. I managed to type that last sentence with a straight face.

Fast & Furious 6: Still accelerating

Fast & Furious 6 (2013) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rating: PG-13, and somewhat generously, for intense and relentless violence, action and mayhem, along with occasional profanity and sensuality
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.24.13

Longest...

...airport...

...runway...

...ever.

The Fast & Furious series has long been known for physics-defying stunts that strain credibility, while nonetheless inspiring well-deserved admiration for the way so many of these crazy chases and assorted skirmishes look (somewhat) authentic, as opposed to the obvious fakery of computer-enhanced sweetening. (Make no mistake: CGI plays an important role in these films, but much of the driving is real.)

When a high-speed pursuit veers badly out of control, thanks to the bad guys wielding
a vehicle-crushing tank, Dom (Vin Diesel) realizes that one of his team is seconds
away from certain death. The only possible solution? An insane leap from his speeding
car, of course!

Even by those standards, however, Fast & Furious 6 boasts audacious, jaw-dropping set-pieces that are just plain nuts.

But they’re also tautly edited, reasonably suspenseful and quite entertaining. As comic book movies go, this series delivers ingenious thrills ... even if they are guaranteed to make mechanical and aerospace engineers snort with laughter.

Director Justin Lin and screenwriter Chris Morgan deserve considerable credit. They’ve collaborated on four of these films now — all but the first two — and they have the formula down cold. Take an ever-expanding “family” of familiar characters, grant them plenty of interactive banter, season with vehicular chases every 15 minutes or so, and blend with aggressive punching matches between good guys and bad guys, usually one on one, but sometimes two on two.

Toss in a James Bondian “head villain” with an equally malevolent sidekick, spice with babe shots — because under-dressed women are such an essential part of street-racing — and call it a movie.

And yes, before you ask: Morgan already is scripting Fast & Furious 7 for new director James Wan (Saw, Insidious), which will add Jason Statham to the mix when it roars into theaters next summer.

It’s all absolute and utter nonsense, but thrilling and adrenaline-pumping nonetheless. No doubt responding to demands for bigger and better, Lin and Morgan have customized 6 with road-rage chases involving all manner of souped-up cars, not to mention a tank and a massive Antonov 124 cargo plane (!). And yes, the latter eye-widening melee, during which half a dozen four-wheeled vehicles try to prevent said plane from lifting off, occupies 15 climactic minutes, during which the accelerating plane magically never runs out of runway.

Heck, even allowing for the cross-cutting needed to show simultaneous action on the ground and inside the plane, I figure that runway must’ve stretched at least 20 miles. Land must be cheap in Spain.

Fast Five: Over-revved

Fast Five (2011) • View trailer for Fast Five
Three stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, and much too generously, for profanity, sexual content and unrelenting violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.29.11


If the destruction of personal property were the benchmark of quality in a film, then this one would be a masterpiece. I've not seen so much gratuitous carnage since the Blues Brothers wrecked an entire shopping mall — amid dozens of needless close-ups of shattered storefronts and smashed merchandise — back in 1980.

Having rather miraculously escaped certain death while dangling from a speeding
train, Brian (Paul Walker, left) and Dominic (Vin Diesel) face a fresh problem:
They're about to roar off a cliff ... with nothing but a long drop below.

All attitude and relentless road rage, Fast Five is vacuous Hollywood product at its finest. Director Justin Lin rarely allows himself to be bothered by irritating details such as plot or character development; this fifth entry in the Fast & Furious series survives solely on macho posturing, scantily clad babes, screaming engines, spinning tires and gear-shift close-ups. I could make a rude comment about symbolism, and what the latter traditionally compensates for, but that'd be giving way too much credit to Chris Morgan's laughably dim-witted screenplay.

Admittedly, Vin Diesel isn't one of the world's great actors, but under better circumstances he can hold camera focus and deliver a line with gruff, teddy bear charm. But he can't make any headway with Morgan's lame dialogue here, which never rises above hilariously soap-opera-ish twaddle such as "It's all about family" ... this from a guy who has, during the course of this series, thought nothing of putting his sister and girlfriend — and anybody else who might have meant something to him — in harm's way every five to 10 minutes. Like they say, love can be cruel.

I'll give editors Kelly Matsumoto, Fred Raskin and Christian Wagner credit for momentum; they certainly move things along, in the manner of a relentless roller coaster. An endless roller coaster, at that; Fast Five clocks in at an indefensible 130 minutes, which is at least half an hour too long. Morgan pads his storyline with too many tiresome sidebar schemes and blown efforts, and of course we need the token street-racing sequence, with all-but-naked cuties draped provocatively over similarly hot cars. Even stalwart fans are apt to get restless as the third act drags on, by which time this franchise has attempted to re-invent itself as Dominic's Eleven.

That results from this story's extensive character reunion, drawing from faces going all the way back to 2001's The Fast and the Furious, whose success we can thank — or blame, depending on your taste — for the fact that we're still enduring this silly nonsense a decade later.

Lin opens this entry, as is customary, with a typically audacious stunt sequence that ignores both the laws of physics and the human body's resilience. With Dominic Toretto (Diesel) en route to a federal pen for the rest of his life, good buddy Brian (Paul Walker) and Dom's sister, Mia (Jordana Brewster), roar up behind the prison transport bus and execute a maneuver that flips the larger vehicle, rolling it like a huge metal sausage until it smashes into pieces at the side of this conveniently deserted road.

Cool, said my Constant Companion; Dominic and everybody else on that bus obviously just got pulped beyond recognition, so I guess we can go home.

No such luck. As half a dozen TV newscasters subsequently inform us, "Miraculously, nobody was killed." (Now, there's an understatement!) And, of course, everybody is accounted for except Dominic, who's gone with the wind.

Takers: Badly Taken

Takers (2010) • View trailer for Takers
Three stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, and quite generously, for profanity, fleeting nudity and truly insane levels of gunfire
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in the The Davis Enterprise, 09.03.10
Buy DVD: Takers • Buy Blu-Ray: Takers [Blu-ray]


Director John Luessenhop has a nifty little B-thriller here. 

Too bad he doesn't want anybody to enjoy it. 

That's the only conclusion to be drawn from Luessenhop's pervasive and obnoxious hand-held camerawork: not only vertigo-inducing but a serious impediment to appreciating the stuntwork and action sequences in his film's frantic third act. 

One sizzling foot-chase boasts the breathtaking intensity and hell-for-leather jumps and tumbles of the memorable "free-running" pursuit that opened Casino Royale, and this one covers considerable territory in downtown city pedestrian and vehicular traffic. Alas, it's impossible to appreciate — and therefore merely tiresome — because it appears as if Luessenhop and cinematographer Michael Barrett "filmed" the entire sequence by running after their two stars, tossing the camera back and forth between them, and hoping for the best. 

We can thank cinema-verite documentaries and low-budget horror flicks for bringing this irritating technique to the attention of hack directors who now believe that it's the epitome of slick: It ain't, and it's time this stylistic hiccup was retired. Without honors. 

When he's not succumbing to such self-indulgent nonsense, Luessenhop orchestrates a fairly taut heist thriller, working from a high-octane script he co-authored with Peter Allen, Gabriel Casseus and Avery Duff. It feels a bit like 2003's remake of The Italian Job on steroids, laced with a soupon of the Vegas-style cool from Ocean's 11. 

In other words, the de facto villains are much more engaging than the overmatched Forces of Good trying to bring them down. 

Loyalty to a former colleague, or common sense? Faced with the
offer of embracing another high-stakes heist very quickly after their
previous job, our suave anti-heroes -- from left, John (Paul Walker),
Jesse (Chris Brown), Jake (Michael Ealy), A.J. (Hayden Christensen)
and Gordon (Idris Elba) -- weigh the pros and cons of getting
involved. Alas, they'll choose badly...

Longtime friends Gordon Betts (Idris Elba), John Rahway (Paul Walker), A.J. (Hayden Christensen) and the Attica brothers, Jake (Michael Ealy) and Jesse (Chris Brown), enjoy an extravagant lifestyle filled with hot cars, hotter women and plenty o' cash. They finance this largess with meticulously plotted and well-coordinated bank robberies: no more than one per year, will no clues left behind. 

Indeed, law enforcement has treated all previous jobs as one-offs, and isn't even remotely aware of the existence of these serial criminals. 

Fast & Furious: Traffic stop

Fast & Furious (2009) • View trailer for Fast & Furious
Two stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, and rather generously, for profanity, drug references, sexual candor and plenty of violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.9.09
Buy DVD: Fast & Furious • Buy Blu-Ray: Fast & Furious (2-Disc Special Edition) [Blu-ray]

Some bad movies are grindingly boring: endurance tests that make one pray to be anywhere else ... even suffering through root canal surgery.

Other bad movies are what I'd call watchably awful: generally too stupid to be taken seriously, but at least graced with momentum and punctuated by dialogue so laughable — for all the wrong reasons — that viewers have a good time making fun of the entire endeavor. Think of the movies so wonderfully lampooned by the late and still lamented Mystery Science Theater 3000.

As Dominic (Vin Diesel) cautiously edges up to the rear of a huge tanker truck,
gal-pal Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) prepares to jump onto the back of the big
rig and then make her way to the couplings, whereupon Dominic's larcenous
buddies -- racing in tandem behind them -- can seize the shipment and drive
away. It's just another day on the job...

Fast & Furious is just such a film.

Although it's nice to see the entire cast from 2001's The Fast and the Furious back in their respective roles — something that wasn't true of the second and third films in this numb-nuts franchise — it would have been nicer if director Justin Lin's new movie were more worthy of their participation.

No doubt Lin got this assignment after having helmed 2006's The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, which begs an intriguing question: That was a lousy movie, as well, and since when does dreadful work encourage financial backers to hire a hack director again?

Only in Hollywood...

Still, as my Constant Companion quite accurately noted, it's good to see Vin Diesel again, particularly in the sort of role that best suits him: tough, brooding and monosyllabic. Diesel's been off the radar since 2005's woefully miscalculated family-friendly comedy, The Pacifier; the two movies he made since then scarcely made a ripple in the cinematic pond.

Diesel's definitely an actor of limited range, but he's reasonably entertaining within that range; he has the burly, teddy-bear magnetism that also worked for Arnold Schwarzenegger, early in his career. And while one cannot fault actors for trying to stretch their range, some simply haven't got the chops.

Sylvester Stallone eventually realized that he wasn't capable of much beyond his Rocky and Rambo films; Diesel is fortunate enough to also have two franchises going for him, these Fast & Furious flicks and his Chronicles of Riddick sci-fi action entries. Toss in an occasional XXX, and he should be good for a few years yet.

(Although one does wonder what happened to the promising young talent who was so memorable in his supporting role in Saving Private Ryan.)